Donovan-Wright Associates

I’ve been gnawing on this issue for a while now, especially since as a function of (ahem) age, multi-tasking is not a ready-made skill. Far from it.

And, I was absolutely delighted to read this morning, mono-tasking may be re-emerging as an art once lost, now found.

It seems like yesterday when my daughter first starting talking about “friending” people. Huh, my feeble mind wondered? Just another one of those passing kid things, I thought and brushed it out of my consciousness.

Today it is not possible to brush those terms from consciousness. In fact, if you’re working in many professions today, it’s plastered all over the place and summarized in the term “networking.”

Now mind you, networking is no longer your mother or father’s brand of networking. It is no longer going to a few meetings a month, talking to some colleagues on the phone, taking on an office or two in an organization or two, and handling some work off line, on your own time, in a relaxed and focused fashion.

Nope, not like that anymore at all. Today it is a whirling dervish of Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Delicious, Wordpress, Blogger, Twitter, text messaging, email, and myriad other digitally-based networking and communication options. Not the least of it is is that today’s super-networkers are doing five or six things at one time. They are involved with a list of groups too long to fit on a single screen. They are constantly in your email, Twitter, etc., their smiling faces making you wonder when they get any “real” work done.

I know of one woman whose face is ALWAYS in mine, digitally of course, whose always leading some seminar or other, who is a member of countless groups and organizations, and an office in just about as many. Oh, and did I mention that she has her own business and is an ordained minister? Phew. She makes me tired. She makes me tired in several ways. First is simply the act of reading and thinking about all she does. Second is that her constant presence is just plain tiresome. Can there be such a thing as overdoing your brand in a digital milieu?

I do believe so. I once asked her how she gets any work done. She didn’t like the question. She didn’t answer. What does that mean?

My son and I were talking about this issue last night, and I proffered that we wise ones are perhaps the last of generations that deal in depth. What I mean is, we have been trained to take an issue, think about it, study it, and delve into it in a deep and thorough way. I think our approach tends to offer results that are more complete, and dare I say, of a higher quality? I mean, if you’re focusing on just one thing instead of multitasking, there has to be a difference in results!

As for the younger set (my 25 year old son does not consider himself a member of this group), the approach is more of a skimming off the top, never delving too deep, and striving to get “it” (whatever that might be) done as quickly as possible.

To conclude: there is obviously a major difference in styles here, and I, for one, have concluded that to try and adopt the multi-tasking, fast-paced style of the digital networking set is simply not going to work for me. In fact, it is a formula for disaster. So stuff it, I say.

The cool thing is, it seems like other people are saying the same thing.

Why is it that some people insist on writing in all capital letters? I love to peruse the Saturday real estate section in the local paper, and enjoy reading the descriptions of my “dream homes,” except for the ones written in all caps! It’s not that I’m trying to make a point, it’s that I seriously can’t read the darn things. Reading in all caps is difficult. You have to really sit down and concentrate on the letters, and then on how they go together. Not to mention, writing in all caps is one of the no-no’s of professional writing specifically because it “feels” to the reader like someone is shouting!

I came across another example yesterday. I was going through a social networking site and came upon the page of a writer that was written in, you got it, all caps! It surprised me that a writer did not know better about presenting herself in her own medium.

On point: please don’t write in all caps, and here’s why:

1. Hard to read
2. Shouting at readers
3. Looks unprofessional

In just the past two days I have come across two articles, both of which “how-to’s” about good writing, both of which were rife with writing errors. What errors? Passive voice, pseudo-academic style (in other words, difficult to understand), agreement of pronouns and antecedent (That person caught their coat in the door), crazy sentence construction, and frankly — text that sounds like it was written by an ESOL (English as a second language) writer. Take a look for yourself (be sure to come back, I’ve got lots more to say.)

English maven that I am, I left a comment on the site basically saying what I am saying to you. But I want to say MORE to you, because the great highway in the virtual-sky is becoming clogged with crap that multiplies explosively moment by moment. Let me tell you why.

The marketplace is turning inside out, upside down as brick and mortar gives way to the virtual shingle (website, blog, SNS, etc.) I’ll spare you the technical mumbo-jumbo, but to make an Internet presence means to generate content, content content. Translated: articles, essays, blog entries, reviews, how-to’s,m features, interviews. When businesses take the approach of wanting to throw up a bunch of content to get ratings, traffic, etc., they don’t care about quality. They do care about keywords, key phrases, and Search Engine crawlers. What you get on these sites is often times, crap. And, you get crap written by offshore workers whose main language is NOT English, but they are cheap, cheap, cheap.

My purpose here is threefold:

After many years of schlepping my way through one corporate environment after another, I most inadvertently fell into teaching at the college level. The first few years were hell. I remember some of the worst digestive issues I’ve ever had and anxiety attacks that made me certain I would end up splayed all over the floor of my classrooms. But somewhere along the way, something changed, and felt comfortable. Then something changed some more and I felt good. And today, I feel excited and exhilarated every time I get up in front of that class. In short, I have fun! Yes, we get stuff done, too. But we all have fun. The students tell me they really like my classes, which range from Digital Literacy to Business Communications to Writing as a Business.

Just like anything that “works” anymore, my style is relationship. I seek to know each student — their strengths, their “opportunities,” their personalities, when they’re up, down, and in-between. This is something different for them; they are not used to their professors wanting to “know” them. I work with them in class — in groups and one-on-one. I have meetings with them outside of class. I write copious notes on their papers, I kid them, I allow things to get a little “casual” in my class. And it works. After a few weeks they relax into this new andrological style, and then we have fun. What’s more — they learn!

Now hold back on the delete key, please, because I have a most important message to impart. People can’t write. I have taught writing and communication courses in higher education for 12 years, and each year the situation becomes more dire indeed. The worst part of it is is that students don’t care, well most of them anyway. Some days I want to stand in front of the classroom and scrape my fingernails down the blackboard out of sheer frustration!

The real challenge in teaching students how to deal with the language correctly is teaching grammar sans terminology. Students look at me with eyes crossed, or they don’t look at me at all, eyes paralyzed by their cell and frantic text messaging if I start tossing around around terms like participle phrases and dangling modifiers.

You’d think the texting would help, after all, it is a form of writing. Form is the operative word, my friends. R u 4-getting r w1nderful, gr8t time?

We all know what the translation here is: Are you forgetting our wonderful, great time? Admittedly, when I’m texting, I use the shortcuts just as frequently as the next guy. But, another operative word, I know the difference between the casual, fast-track-texting language and the English language as it is meant to be written.

I admit it. I am a grammar maven. I cringe when I see a list that is not parallel in construction. My stomach lurches when I read sentences containing comma splices or sentences presented as such that aren’t! So when I’ve read enough papers loaded with these and myriad other errors, up to the black(white) board I march, chalk/marker in hand, and away we go with sentence diagramming.

It amazes me that out of a class of 25 students, maybe 2 or 3 have ever even heard of sentence diagramming, so evidently it has become a lost art. But thanks to Sister Felicitus and her sentence diagramming lessons where we all shook in terror lest we be called up to the blackboard to diagram, I learned how to put a sentence together. I actually loved it. I found it to be like a puzzle!

And now I have the puzzle of figuring out how to teach college students to write the language correctly in an era where you are what you write!